Lao She wrote a very joking story in "Camel Xiangzi".
The protagonist Xiangzi, a lifelong dream, is to have a rickshaw of his own.
For this goal, he got up early and worked late to make money, and he didn't dare to slack off for a day.
However, no matter how hard Shoko tries, she is never able to change her fate.
Isn't Shoko's tragic life a portrayal of many people in reality?
Some people work diligently and just want to buy a house so that their families can live a better life;
But after struggling for half a life, he couldn't afford to pay the down payment, so he could only live in a rented house.
Some people work day and night just to save a sum of money to provide quality education for their children;
But after years of hard work, he has not been able to get his wish, so he can only hope to let the child work his own......
Many people always feel that as long as they work hard, they will be able to live a good life one day.
But the reality is often: no matter how hard you try, most people can't get out of the bottom.
Why is that?
There is a comment on the Internet that has won countless resonances:
Until his death, Shoko believed that he had failed to live a good life because he had not worked hard enough to pull the cart.
He never thought that it was ignorance and narrow-mindedness that made him lose the opportunity to turn over again and again, and finally rotted in the quagmire of life and gave up struggling.
If people want to change their fate, it is not enough to rely on hard work.
01
- Hard work is a prerequisite for success, but it is not the whole story.
That year, Shoko was 18 years old.
With youthful steps and full of enthusiasm, he walked into Beiping.
When he came to the foot of the imperial city, he was very excited and determined to break out of the world here.
With the studness and honesty of a country boy, he did almost everything that could be eaten with all his strength.
Eventually, he chose his own trade: pulling carts.
What he was thinking about was buying a rickshaw of his own.
But how easy is it to buy a car?
A rickshaw costs 100 yuan, and Shoko can only save 1 dime a day.
In other words, if he wants to buy a car, it will take him a thousand days.
Shoko knows that if you want to buy a car, you need to save money, and you can't be in a hurry before that.
So he emptied all his belongings and rented a car first, and ran in Beiping City.
The young Xiangzi Kong Wu is powerful, and some of them are inexhaustible.
But after two days of pulling the car, his feet and neck were still swollen like two gourds, and he could no longer lift them.
From morning to night, from east to west, from south to north.
When Shoko pulls the cart, he feels like a spinning top that is being pumped and turned, and he is pushed around every day.
But even with such hard work, it is still extremely difficult to make money.
Sometimes, he pulls the car from Dongzhimen to Xizhimen, but still can't meet a single guest;
Sometimes, he was so tired that he was sweating, and he would encounter customers who did not pay.
He fills his daily life with hard work, but the dream of buying a car has become an unattainable luxury.
On the other hand, isn't that what we live in?
You work 9 to 5 in the cubicle every day, but your salary is barely enough to make ends meet.
You also think that you can achieve your dreams with hard work, but reality always gives you the loudest slap in the face.
The book "The Book of Navarre" says:
"You will never get rich by renting out your own time, because when personal investment is highly correlated with income, the income will be relatively fixed, and it will be difficult to achieve a substantial breakthrough."
With hard work alone, you may be able to earn 3,000, 6,000, or even 20,000 yuan a month.
But when you try to go one step further and hope to earn 50,000 yuan a month, you will find that it is almost an insurmountable gap.
In this world, no one can truly achieve financial freedom by working more overtime than others.
Have you ever seen a brick movers, because they moved bricks quickly and well, and finally became a real estate tycoon?
Which takeaway guy have you ever seen, because the delivery of takeaway is fast and good, and finally the RV is added?
If hard work can really get rich, then the richest man in the world must be a donkey.
Spending sweat to earn money can indeed be exchanged for food and clothing.
But relying on this method alone will never achieve a counterattack in life.
02
- Wealth is a reward for cognition, not for diligence.
After gritting his teeth and working hard for 3 years, he finally saved enough 100 yuan to buy a car.
He thought that his dream was within reach, but reality gave him a hard blow.
For a time, the old city of Beijing was shrouded in war and rumors.
Everyone said that the warlords outside the Xizhi Gate were frantically seizing the vehicles, and the drivers did not dare to take the work easily.
But in order to earn two more dollars, Shoko still ventured out to pull the car.
Sure enough, before he could get on the trail, he was even kidnapped by a dozen soldiers with his car.
The car was taken away by the government, and Xiangzi was in pain.
A few days later, he took advantage of the chaos to escape from the barracks, and took three camels with him in exchange for some money.
But this money was far from enough to buy a car, so he could only go back to the depot to rent a car to save money.
Liu Si, the owner of the car factory, saw that he was honest and offered to lend him money to buy another car.
However, Shoko insisted on buying a car with his own money because he was reluctant to pay interest.
The employer's wife also wanted to help him apply for a passbook in the bank, so as to ensure the safety of the funds and earn interest.
But Shoko felt that the bank was not safe enough and rejected the offer.
In the days when Mr. Cao's family worked as a monthly coachman, Xiangzi met Gao's mother, who was proficient in financial management.
Gao's mother pulled Xiangzi and said to him: "Xiangzi, put it in your pocket, a son will always be a child, let it out, the money will be paid, you listen to me, it's not wrong!" ”
But Shoko scoffs at this way of making money, and he feels that only the money he saves is the most down-to-earth.
Unexpectedly, a cunning detective set his sights on him and deceived his family in a few words.
You see, Shoko has worked hard enough and bought the car she wants.
But why are you still in poverty?
Because he can make money in a down-to-earth manner, but the money he earns is not enough to resist sudden attacks from the outside world.
Because he can save money honestly, but he doesn't have enough knowledge to keep his wealth or even use money to make money.
Mr. Lao She commented on Xiangzi in the book:
He is not afraid of hardship, and he does not have the vices of ordinary foreign coachmen.
If his environment had been better, or if he had received more education, he would not have fallen into the "rubber ball", and no matter what he did, he would never have failed his opportunity.
But what Xiangzi lacks is education.
Because they are not educated, they do not have a good understanding of things and often make mistakes in judgment.
Liu Si can't pull a car, but he can become the boss of a car dealership; Shoko's car pulls well, but only as a coachman.
The reason is that Liu Si has been thinking about how to be a boss, but Xiangzi has never thought about life outside of pulling a car.
If people only know how to make hard-earned money, it will be difficult to get rid of the shackles of fate.
Because what really determines the amount of wealth is not simple effort, but deeper differences in thinking, vision and resources.
Taken together, these factors create a "chasm" between the rich and the poor.
Therefore, if people want to get rich, they must first be liberated from heavy work and think about more money-making models.
Only by constantly improving our awareness can we get rid of the shackles of poverty and exchange for a new life of destiny.
03
- Success is a small probability event, and before that, it is a strong mental effort.
Shoko bought a car for the first time and it took three full years.
The car was built by him with sweat and ran out step by step with his legs.
However, less than half a year after buying the car, Xiangzi had nothing.
When he bought a car for the second time, all the money on him was cheated out of it in an instant.
At this time, Shoko felt that life was hopeless.
He felt that the world was a foul-smelling quagmire, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't climb out.
The setbacks in his career have not subsided, and the blow to his feelings has made him even more painful.
Shoko has always liked the neighbor's little Fukuko.
Because Xiaofuzi is gentle and considerate, she almost meets all of Xiangzi's expectations for an ideal wife.
But he was forced by life to marry a brutal and domineering tiger girl.
After the tiger girl died in childbirth, Shoko thought that he and Xiaofuzi could spend the rest of their lives happily together.
Unexpectedly, Xiaofuzi at this time had no choice but to sell himself because of his poor life.
Later, she couldn't bear the shame of selling her body and hastily ended her life.
Shoko was completely disheartened when she learned the news.
He has nothing to hope in the world, and his future is even more bleak.
He no longer seriously pulls the cart, and his life has become a mess.
He began to indulge himself, learning to smoke, drink, and even go in and out of Fengyue places.
The Shoko who once loved life and worked hard is gone.
In its place is a numb spectator who has lost his enthusiasm for life and is lazy to eat.
Is what happened to Shoko sad?
Naturally.
He thought that hard work could change his fate, but he ignored that he couldn't just rely on dead brains to make money;
He thought that he could stay together for a lifetime if he fell in love, but he ignored that there are still too many things in this world that cannot be fulfilled.
He thought that if he lost his car and Xiaofuzi, life would be meaningless, but he ignored that life is an alternation of ups and downs, and there will be a new turn for the better after encountering setbacks.
Shoko's greatest sorrow is not because he has suffered too many setbacks, but because he has completely lost hope and given up resistance and struggle under the critical blow of fate.
Bi Shumin wrote in the book: "We have to fight against fate, where can we not be hurt." ”
Until the god of fate favors them, all difficulties are tests for the poor.
Get through it, and you can change your fate; If you can't get through it, you can only drown in the quagmire of reality.
I've heard a saying:
"Most people just turn their suffering into a scar and then blossom on the scar.
But the real rich people have sharpened their mental strength far beyond ordinary people in suffering. ”
What is Mental Power?
is the ability to get back up in the mud;
It is the ability to never admit defeat no matter how much setback you experience;
It is the ability to fight it to the end in the face of the injustice of fate.
Like the artist Ma Sanli, he was slapped by the puppet army in his early years, cheated of money by the owner of the opera garden, and blackmailed by the ruffians and hooligans......
But even so, he was never discouraged, but became more and more resolute, and finally appeared in the public eye with his excellent eloquence.
Like the writer Lu Yao, his childhood was tragically famine, his youth was abandoned by his first love, and he was poor in his prime......
But he was still able to puff up his chest and respond to the attacks of life with the tip of his pen, and finally became a generation of literary masters.
The writer Ha Jin once said: "In fact, the difference between people and people in the end is the hurdles one by one." Can you get through it, it's not the same after it's over. ”
The hurdles in life are one after another, and the upward steps are also step by step. Whether it's a staircase or a hurdle, you don't know until you cross it.
Strip away the weak mentality of resignation and use suffering as a grind, so that you can really stand up from the muddy bottom and climb to the heights.
▽
Some people say that when they watch "Camel Xiangzi", the first time they watched Xiangzi, the second time they watched Lao She, and the third time they watched themselves.
Xiangzi is a tiny microcosm of the thousands of low-level working people under the background of the old society.
Their fate is like tissue paper, unable to withstand the light blow of the hurricane of the current situation, and the slightest touch will be crumbling, and even eventually fall apart.
But no matter how the times develop, in fact, there is no absolute dead end in life.
Fate has carved a fork in the road for Xiangzi many times, but he chose the most dilapidated one.
In this society, if you want to control your destiny, you don't rely on external forces, but on inner choices and will.
The wind will extinguish the candle and it will make the fire burn brighter and stronger.
The real strong are not born to stand on a high place, but from the barren soil, constantly thinking, struggling, and even awakening and rising.
Source: WeChat public account "One book per night"
作者:Leyla
Edit: Yifan
[Disclaimer: This account is a theoretical and practical platform for integration and innovation in the field of propaganda and media, and is an official public welfare account, and this article is reprinted for the purpose of conveying more information. If there is a source label error or other inaccuracies, please contact us. We will correct it in a timely manner. Thank you]